Renowned New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman clearly and unequivocally says that the very reason that he lost his faith and embraced agnosticism and atheism was because of pain and suffering in the world. Period.
But Christianity has never taught of an earthy world without pain and suffering. Pain and suffering don’t disprove the existence of God. It only disproves the existence of a god who doesn’t allow pain and suffering.
And that’s not the god of Christianity. Christianity’s God promised that there would be pain and suffering in this world. The very movement of Christianity itself in fact involves the pain and suffering of the most innocent man who had ever lived.
Exactly; God gives meaning to pain and suffering by coming in the flesh and participating in it Himself.
That to me has always been one of the chief problems with the “what kind of god would do/allow this” argument.
That and the fact that any value judgment as to what is good or just or whatever assumes some objective standard outside ourselves against which one can make the original accusation. The assertion is self contradictory.
If there is no God and Carl Sagan was right that the material universe is all that is or was or will ever be, then there is no good or bad, fair or just or anything there just is what is.
